7/07/2009 @ 6:35PM

As Music Mags Fall, Pitchfork Is Booming

The Big Four of music publishing–Rolling Stone, Blender, Spin, Vibe–became the Big Two this year.

Industry watchers weren’t surprised to see the demise of 8-year-old Blender, whose ad pages dropped 31% last year. The death of Vibe was less expected. Founded by Quincy Jones, the 16-year-old Bible of hip-hop had a healthy circulation of 800,000. In its last issue, it scooped competitors with a story about Eminem’s drug problems.

As the miserable ad climate continues its toll, one music title is bucking the trend: online upstart Pitchfork Media. Unlike its better-known competitors, Pitchfork.com delivers few major scoops and lacks famous financial backers. But it also has no distribution or printing costs. Its quirky, passionate staff express little concern over the state of its balance sheet, which appears to teeter from one year to the next between profitability and losing money.

Pitchfork was founded in 1996 by Ryan Schreiber, then a 19-year-old record store clerk, in the basement of his parents’ home. He launched the site as a platform for his love of cult bands and niche artists. Pitchfork became a hub for indie-rock lovers to post album reviews and swap industry news. Its reviews create instant, viral publicity, akin to a friend whose tastes you share tipping you off to the next big thing.

Since its launch Pitchfork has grown to a full-time staff of 17 who operate from a second-floor loft above a yoga center in Wicker Park, a hipster Chicago neighborhood. The site averages 1.8 million visitors a month, who generate some 23 million page views. Writers earn $80 to $110 for a review, paid by ads sold to a dozen national advertisers, including
Apple
and
Toyota
, who have stuck with Pitchfork during the recession.

The site posts 25 new album reviews a week plus an average 15 news items and 15 track reviews a day. A rave review on Pitchfork may not get a band signed, but it will get it heard. Indie bands like Arcade Fire and Broken Social Scene, who would normally create audiences by heavy touring, instead created a following piqued by Pitchfork airplay and site reviews. The percussive sound of another band, avant-garde group Liars, was panned by Spin and Rolling Stone. A Pitchfork reviewer begged to differ, adding Liars to the site’s top 10 albums of 2006, delivering the band a small but instant fan base. “They won’t be performing any Miller Lite commercials,” says editor in chief Scott Plagenhoef, “but their music is brilliant.”

The median age of Pitchfork’s readers is 26 and includes record producers, talent scouts and disc jockeys. It covers arcane music genres, from “lush pop” to “dubstep,” a subgenre of the U.K.’s electronic garage scene, but has also covered bigger indie bands like Franz Ferdinand, Beck, Pearl Jam and Radiohead. On a 10-point review scale any album rated 8.6 or above at Pitchfork will drive sales, says a record industry analyst. Arcade Fire’s debut album became a hot seller after it clinched a 9.7 review. The indie label that produced the album later got some good news: Arcade Fire was the label’s first artist to break into Billboard’s Top 200 chart.

Pitchfork sees future growth in a recently launched streaming channel on the site, which includes staff-chosen music videos, video documentaries and interviews with members of U2 and MIA, says Pitchfork publisher Christopher Kaskie. The site may soon pipe content onto mobile platforms too.

One person keeping an eye on the company is Billboard Executive Editor Robert Levine. “I give Pitchfork a lot of credit,” he says. “They may be small, but they get substantial respect in the music business.”